CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 189 km round trip from Sydney Central Business District - roughly 3 h 59 in the saddle. On the way it passes Old Government House and Domain, Australian Convict Sites and back through Old Government House and Domain. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 31 km this is Grand Pacific Drive, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
The Opera House is the thing that every visitor to Sydney photographs, and it is also a good story about stubbornness and talent. The Danish architect Jørn Utzon won an international competition in 1957 with a design of white sail-like shells rising from the point of land called Bennelong Point. The engineering was so difficult that the building took sixteen years instead of the planned four, costs soared, and a change of government and a dispute with the authorities led Utzon to resign and leave Australia in 1966. He never saw the finished building in person. It opened in 1973, and its tiled shells, covered in thousands of glossy cream and white tiles, have become a symbol of the whole country.
Read the complete Sydney Opera House write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sydney Opera House is where the day begins. Next is Old Government House and Domain.
Few buildings in Australia can claim to be as old as this one. Old Government House sits in Parramatta Park, on a rise above the Parramatta River, and was begun in 1799 under Governor Hunter. It is the oldest surviving public building in the country, a plain, graceful Georgian house where successive governors lived and worked, including Lachlan Macquarie, who added to the estate. It forms part of the UNESCO listing of Australian Convict Sites, which recognises how the penal colony shaped the nation.
Read the complete Old Government House and Domain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Old Government House and Domain comes up about 31 km into the recorded legs. Next is Australian Convict Sites.
North of Sydney, where the Hawkesbury River winds between sandstone cliffs and forested ridges, there is a road that convicts built by hand. The Old Great North Road, begun in the 1820s, was meant to link Sydney with the Hunter Valley, and it was cut and paved by gangs of prisoners working with picks, hammers and iron bars, often in chains. It runs for over two hundred kilometres, and several sections survive, with walls of fitted sandstone, culverts, drains and cuttings that still look neat after two centuries. Together with other sites it is part of the UNESCO-listed Australian Convict Sites, which record the transportation of about 160,000 men, women and children from Britain.
Read the complete Australian Convict Sites write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 90 km into the recorded legs you reach Australian Convict Sites. Next is back through Old Government House and Domain.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Old Government House and Domain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Old Government House and Domain, late in the day. Next is Sydney Opera House.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sydney Opera House write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Sydney Opera House. That is the ride.
Sydney Opera House → Old Government House and Domain is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Old Government House and Domain → Australian Convict Sites is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Australian Convict Sites → back through Old Government House and Domain is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Old Government House and Domain → Sydney Opera House is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.